Ah, Manual training! My grandchildren would be just as uncomprehending as you, Little John. The boys were sent to the "shop" for a couple of hours each week where they cut wood, chiseled wood, nailed wood and glued wood and wasted wood making what, by a stretch of the imagination might be called a stool, or a bench or? This was called "Manual Training." The same Dane I mentioned was a serious stamp collector, and those of us similarily interested spent most of the time in his office cubicle looking at stamps.
The girls went to "Home Economics" where they made aprons, baked and boiled foodstuffs into unidentifiable edibles(?) and otherwise occupied themselves with the "homely arts" of the needle and stove.
This was back in the 1930s for me. I think these school courses finally disappeared sometime after the 1940s.